


Looking Back

by cyren2132



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Rescue Attempt, childhood bullies, open-ended, team held hostage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's up to Daniel to rescue SG-1. <br/>Winner of round two in the Stargate Last Author Standing challenge on Livejournal in 2010. The prompt was "A character does something brave but stupid."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking Back

Daniel had always been good at hiding. It wasn't cowardice; it was pragmatism.  
  
When he was 10, a group of sixth-graders had taken to pushing him around after school before dumping the contents of his bag on the ground and throwing his books as far as they could. Daniel felt confident that, had he leftover lunch money to steal, it would have been theirs.  
  
They didn't frighten him, but it was an annoyance -- especially the day a paperback had landed in a dirty puddle. He could have fought back, but it was four-to-one and Daniel was not particularly tall. He could have got a teacher, but that would have made things worse. If there was one thing he had picked up in his 10 years (besides near-fluency in Arabic and French) it was that nobody liked a fink.  
  
And so he hid. It wasn't difficult. They were pretty loud, and on more than one occasion he had been able to flatten himself against a wall or duck behind a trash bin as they passed. Eventually he would start watching them, learning their routines.   
  
But his pre-emptive avoidance didn't always work. Sometimes he'd think he was in the clear only to be spotted out of the corner of an eye. Of course, he did have some advantages. Not only was he smaller than them, but he was more agile, better able to weave around pedestrians, fit into hidey holes and wriggle his way up trees they couldn't even find a handhold for.   
  
He was smarter than them, too. Most of the time if he took to a tree -- or even a fire escape -- they'd pass by, never once bothering to look up.   
  
Daniel's only advantage now was distance.   
  
As he looked back to those childhood years, he realized if he were ever to look back to this day, he wouldn't have been able to explain how it had happened.   
  
He wasn't sure who had convinced General Hammond that the benefits of adhering to the locals' rule of no weaponry outweighed actually not having weaponry, but they had.   
  
And now they were far from the Stargate, separated and in trouble. Daniel hadn't been there when Jack, Sam and Teal'c were taken. He wished he could say it was because he was looking at ruins, studying glyphs or even chatting with friendly townsfolk. That certainly sounded better than _I was in the bathroom when my entire team was kidnapped_.  
  
They called themselves The Sangulibres, and they were a small faction who had broken away of the town. When they became angry about their self-imposed exile, they would return to terrorize the peaceful people whose medicines rivaled anything Earth had ever seen.  
  
The locals had not mentioned The Sangulibres during prior talks.  
  
Daniel's first thought had been to make for the stargate, dial Earth and get help, but the locals seemed quite certain the impatient Sangulibres, who wanted the key to gate travel, would have killed SG-1 by then. It was only by luck that they hadn't realized SG-1 was a four-man team.  
  
Daniel pleaded for them to help get his friends back, but they just looked at him regretfully. Their policy was to leave the Sangulibres be, and they would not break it.  
  
Fortunately there was one boy who couldn't have been older than 12 that had taken a liking to Teal'c, of all people.   
  
"My name is Niklyk," he had said. "And I will help you."  
  
And that was how this plan came to be. Jack, Sam and Teal'c were bound together in a clearing. Three burly men stood around them, rifling through SG-1's packs, occasionally holding up an item and gesticulating wildly, demanding to know its function.   
  
If Daniel squinted from his spot crouched behind a shrub up an embankment from the clearing he could see Niklyk, also hidden from the Sangulibres.  
  
Daniel had been observing them, but when one picked up a giant stick, he knew it was time to act. A blunt object to the head was a blunt object to the head, whether it was strictly speaking a weapon or not.  
  
Daniel stood and called to them, waving his hands in the air.  
  
"Hey! You!" he shouted. The Sangulibres and SG-1 both turned their heads to look at him, the latter with wide-eyed expressions. Daniel yelled again -- a few choice phrases in the local tongue, taught with a blush by Niklyk. One by one the Sangulibres' eyes grew wide -- not with the horror of SG-1's, but with anger.   
  
Ignoring their captives, the men headed his way.  
  
Daniel turned and ran. He could hear them scrambling up the hill, closer than he would have liked, but there was no time to question the wisdom of his plan now. The Sangulibres were pushing farther into the forest.  
  
Finally, his lungs burning, Daniel saw the tree. It sprouted from the ground in a Y with large horizontal branches farther up. Daniel jumped, using the tree itself for more height and reaching for the the first horizontal branch. He fell short. His fingernails scraped the bark, breaking as it crumbled and fell away. He had momentum though and had been able to throw his left arm over the branch.   
  
Ignoring the pain, he hauled one leg up until it met wood. Daniel could hear his pursuers closing in as he pulled himself into the tree. It was a stark reminder that he was no longer 10 years old.   
  
They came crashing through the brush. Daniel held his breath, pressing the side of his face into the scratchy wood. He hoped Niklyk had been able to free the others.  
  
The men stormed back and forth, only a handful of feet below Daniel. They yelled at one another but Daniel couldn't hear the words over the pounding of his own heart. He squeezed his eyes shut.  
  
 _Please don't look up, please don't look up, please don't look up._

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to address the main feedback I've been getting (and giving myself) about this story, and figured why not do it here, because let's be honest: This was just a fun little diversion from my other projects and I'm not going to be re-writing it.
> 
> **The hell is up with that name? Sangulibres, what?**  
>  I know. I had this idea that the planet's culture was all very peaceful and crunchy granola -- so much so that it almost seemed like a trait of the race (in their blood, if you will). I wanted the bad guys to feel like they were breaking free from all that pacifist stuff to go be a bunch of hellions or whatever.
> 
> And I didn't want to just call them The Others or The Mean Ones or The People Who Don't Play Nice, so instead I made up a bad name derived from the words sanguine and libre. But the word count limit kept me from expanding on that -- and even if it hadn't, it probably just would have been a giant exposition dump, which I figure I probably had enough of, what with Daniel's Childhood Story Hour going on up there.
> 
> Also, Niklyk? Yeah, I don't know. I probably could have pulled Scrabble tiles at random and found a better name.


End file.
